Great Fraser River Flood, 1948
Hopefully, the worst is over in this year’s flooding in the Fraser Valley.
Happily, the damage done to date hasn’t come even close to that during the crisis of the spring of 1948 when many of British Columbia’s rivers ran wild.
From Prince Rupert on the coast eastward through Prince George to the Alberta border, and all the way south to Vancouver, rampaging rivers, fed by snow-melt, threw off hastily-erected bonds of sand and gravel and drove hundreds of refugees before them.
Despite these efforts
homes, farms and businesses had to be abandoned as thousands of acres vanished beneath seas of mud amid early reports of two fatalities.
Prince Rupert was besieged by a rising Skeena River, Terrace was cut off from the outside world when its highway and railway links were washed away, and residents of Remo, Usk and Pacific prepared to flee the rising Okanagan River.
May 31 – Premier Byron Johnson, declaring a state of emergency, empowered Col. T.E. Snow to call out 4000 active and reserve soldiers. From his headquarters aboard the frigate HMCS Antigonish, Snow coordinated the activities of navy, army, air force, police, Red Cross, government and volunteer personnel.
As Royal Canadian Air Force planes airlifted 10,000 sandbags to Matsqui, where only rooftops showed above the half-mile-wide Fraser, a dike was breached at Ridgevale. It was feared that Rosedale would go momentarily, Chilliwack was added to the danger list and Pitt Meadows was evacuated.
Mission reported the Fraser to be at 24.2 feet and expected it to rise to 25 feet by midnight. The Red Cross said 75,000 persons had been affected by the flooding.
June 1 – The Fraser “slowed its pace [and] upper country water districts showed improved conditions”. In the Interior, army engineers dynamited logjams to ease the straining river. A further 8000 acres of rich croplands had been lost to the rampaging Kootenay, Kamloops homes and farms were abandoned, the farmers forced to shoot their livestock to spare them from drowning.
The death toll rose to four.
During Operation Overflow, the navy’s evacuation of the Harrison Lake-Agassiz region, a flotilla of small craft gingerly made its way “over what were once fences and farmers’ green fields” to ferry residents to Harrison Mills.
A marvel of the Mission evacuation was the the deep-sea tug Heatherton. River pilots had warned that it was “insane” to try taking ocean-going craft upriver, but Capy.Ted Beckstrom rescued 125 persons.
June 2 – At Sumas Prairie 1000 residents fled before an 80-foot break in the dikes and 1200 more acres of farm land were lost. By this time no fewer than 9000 people were homeless.
The river dropped five inches at Prince George but climbed eight at Harrison Hot Springs. Some dike workers had been without sleep for 72 hours. Chilliwack, Matsqui, Pitt Meadows, Lulu Island and Trail were threatened. The washing-out of the Great Northern tracks near New Westminster severed Vancouver’s last rail link with Washington State.The CPR and CNR lines to eastern Canada had already been cut.
Volunteers reponded to an appeal by farmers to milk surviving cows. RCAF crews rested after a 4800-mile round trip from Montreal with 500,000 sandbags. Said a Dewdney farmer: “I’ve been haulin’ sand for three days and three nights. I tried to sleep but my eyes clicked open.”
“From one end of the Fraser Valley to the other,” it was reported, “there is so much misery and despair that the human mind refuses to accept it. Tears become mock laughter and the laughter is worse than the tears.”
June 3 – As the heat wave continued to feed boiling rivers, Hatzic residents fled before a 15-foot-high wall of water, and Trail residents feared a new onslaught. Even where water levels were receding the situation remained dangerous because weeks-old dikes had become waterlogged.
Castlegar hadn’t received food supplies for two weeks. Army engineers prepared to blow up the Rosedale ferry bridge as its log jam swelled. The death toll climbed to five when 76-year-old prospector Easter Hicks drowned in Heffley Creek, north of Kamloops.
June 4 – Fraser Delta’s Barnston almost vanished when its dikes collapsed. Naval craft evacuated the 300 military and civilian workers who were trapped, 6000 more acres vanished under water. A pilot watched the Lougheed Highway disappear: “The highway appeared like a jetty on a stormy day with waves lashing at it and spray flying overhead.”
June 5 – The situation seesawed overnight as dikes held. Agassiz reported some flooded areas were draining. The RCAF airlifted pumps and another 12,000 sandbags to Trail. 50,000 acres remained under water.
June 6 – It was reported that 35,000 dike workers “appeared to be winning slowly their long, bitter battle”.
June 7 – Disaster. A record high tide coincided with the hottest day of the year. Melting snows raced seaward. The high tide brought the flow to a halt then started to back up. The spring tides exerted even greater pressure upon weakened dikes. Col. Snow called out Vancouver Island reservists and 100 Blaine, Wash., residents joined the battle.
June 8 – Army personnel retreated from Creston at dawn when collapsing dikes yielded a further 10,000 acres to flood waters. The Columbia and Kootenay rivers surged to record highs. More troops were airlifted into battle from the Prairies.
June 9 – “With one eye on the heavy river and the other on the dread spring tide, scheduled to send a massive assault wave inland, anxious flood fighters cling with grim tenacity to their work of bolstering the dikes.” Revelstoke joined the danger list; if her tired defenses failed, the sudden wave would smash Trail.
June 10 – Thousands of exhausted flood fighters waited grimly for the major break they knew to be coming.
June 11 – Sumas Prairie was evacuated as the spring tide surged higher than forecast. Torrential rains sent the Columbia surging 12 inches in 24 hours. The Trail hospital was evacuated.
June 13 – Incredibly, all rivers were receding. It was the beginnning of the end of the Great Flood of 1948. Slowly, surely the waters fell and the staggering task of cleaning up began. For those whose homes were ruined, crops destroyed, herds diminished, it would be years before their struggles ended.
Fast-forward to May 2018 and another flooding crisis in the Fraser Valley. It will be of little consolation to this year’s flooding victims that total damage and inconvenience they have sustained is considerably less than that of 70 years ago when all mainland British Columbia rivers ran wild and the Fraser River entered the history books for its Great Flood of 1948.
